


Dead Girl Walking

by LeftHandOfSnarkness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-24 09:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12010353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftHandOfSnarkness/pseuds/LeftHandOfSnarkness
Summary: Nancy knows they might die in the morning, and she isn't going to spend what might be her last hours sitting alone in her room.Takes place after the funeral, but before she and Jonathan go looking for the monster.NOT A CROSS-OVER, despite the title.





	1. Got No Time To Knock

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the song "Dead Girl Walking" from Heathers: The Musical, but this isn't a crossover- none of Heathers characters appear in this story. I've messed around with the timeline a bit, assuming that Nancy and Jonathan head into the woods the morning after Will's 'funeral' instead of later that day. I've also basically ignored Steve (sorry, Steve).  
> As always, comments and criticism are most welcome!

Nancy might die tomorrow, and she is strangely okay with that fact. What she is  _not_  okay with is spending what might be the last hours of her life staring up at the white paint of her bedroom ceiling. She rolled over slightly to look at the clock and nearly groaned out loud. It was still only 10:00 P.M. She had promised to meet Jonathan at 8:00 A.M. sharp on the road her brother and his friends called 'Mirkwood' so they could hunt down whatever that  _thing_  was that had stolen Barb and Will from them.  _Ten hours to live, how shall I spend them?_

Nancy Wheeler was okay with dying, but there were a million things she wasn't going to get to do if she was killed by an inter-dimensional being. Ride a motorcycle. Go to Paris. Go to college. Go anywhere that wasn't Hawkins, Indiana for long enough that she wouldn't be instantly pegged as a small-town girl, nearly identical to a million other small-town girls.  _Well, at least if you die trying to hunt down a horror movie monster you won't end up like your mother_ , her brain supplied unhelpfully. 

 

The rest of the Wheeler house was dark and quiet. Her dad was already asleep on his recliner, Holly had been laid down hours ago, and her mom had gone to sit on her bed and read shortly after. Mike had locked himself in his room after Will's funeral without talking to any of them, and Nancy felt a sharp stab of guilt that her brother didn't know that it hadn't really been his friend in that casket. Part of her wanted to march down the hall and tell him everything- about the Faceless Man, about Barb, about Joyce Byers saying she had talked to Will...but Nancy quickly shook those thoughts away. Now wasn't the right time, not when she couldn't offer him anything but false hopes and slim chances. Tomorrow they would get more answers, she could tell him everything then.  _If she makes it through tomorrow_. Until then it was just her, lying awake, staring at the walls of her frilly blue room, feeling like an animal waiting to be led to the slaughter. 

 

Suddenly she had a thought. A crazy, stupid thought about how to spend the precious minutes that were already ticking by. _Here's an option that I like._  She pushed herself off the bed, finally nerving herself up to make a decision. As quickly as she could, she grabbed her clothes for tomorrow and stuffed them in a bag along with her baseball bat. After writing a quick note for her mother saying she had gotten up early to go to the library she snuck out of the house into the cool night air. 

 

It wasn't far to her destination but she ran the whole way anyway, half out of fear of what might be lurking outside the glow of the streetlights and half because she knew if she started thinking about what she was doing she would lose her nerve. She had never, in a million years, imagined that she would be sneaking around in Jonathan Byers' yard in the middle of the night, trying to break in. She could count the times she had been to his house on one hand, and all of them had been to pick up Mike when her mom decided she wanted him home unexpectedly. What other reason would a girl like Nancy Wheeler have to go over there? Still, the house was small enough that the window to his room was easy to find and even easier to pry open. If it had been any other boy- a cooler boy, a boy like Steve Harrington- she would have thought it had been greased to make it easier to sneak out. But this was Jonathan, who took care of his little brother and worked a job to help support his family and took pictures instead of hanging out with kids his age, who had too many responsibilities and too little spare time to sneak out and no one to meet up with even if he wanted to. He was in bed, fast asleep, not even stirring when she dropped her bag onto the floor with a small  _thud_  and pulled herself through the frame. 


	2. Keep It Locked Out There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter is up! I'm not 100% happy with the story (I think trying to blend "Dead Girl Walking" into the story made it a little rough) but I hate leaving fics unfinished! Thank you to everyone who read and left comments and/or kudos! As always, I appreciate any and all constructive feedback I receive. I've been thinking of maybe doing a Jonathan/Steve fic next, partly to atone for the fact that I am constantly sidelining poor Steve in my stories. If that's something you all would be interested in, let me know!

"Jonathan," she whispered. He didn't move.

"Jonathan!" she shook his blanket-covered leg to try to wake him up.

"Nancy?" his voice was confused and too loud in the silence.

"Shhh!" she whispered urgently. The last thing she needed was to wake up Joyce. Or Jonathan's asshole dad.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, finally quiet, as he moved to sit at the foot of his bed and pushed his messy hair out of his eyes.

"Sorry to wake you," she said, realizing suddenly how bizarre this must be for him, being pulled out of sleep to see her standing in front of him, still in her funeral clothes. She looked around his room and tried to think of what to say next.

"You want to bail on this thing?" he asked tentatively, and her eyes locked with his.

"What? No! Of course not," she snapped, offended he would think she was that flaky, and he looked almost relieved.

"I just," she twisted the rings around on her hands. This was not going the way she thought it was going to. _And how **exactly** did you think it was going to go, Nancy?_ her brain taunted her, "We don't even know what we are going up against. Whatever this thing is it took Barb and Will and vanished into thin air." She took a deep breath, "when we go looking for it tomorrow we don't even know if we will come back."

"So... what do you want?" he asked, and she could tell he was trying to be supportive, helpful. The answer lingered on the edge of her tongue, _I want something beautiful. I want you_ , but Jonathan was already confused and she was rapidly running out of things to say that wouldn't make her sound like a lunatic. So instead of trying to explain she closed the few feet of space between them, straddled his lap and pressed her lips against his. For a moment he froze in shock, and she wondered if maybe she had made a terrible mistake, but when she sank her fingers into his hair he relaxed into her touch, hands smoothing over the skin of her thighs, pulling her closer against him as she deepened the kiss.

 

 

"Nancy," he whispered as they separated minutes, or maybe it was hours, later, his lips swollen and hair even more ruffled. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his, drunk off the way her name sounded almost holy when he said it. "Nancy, why are you here?" he asked softly and she grinned, pressing her hips more tightly against his.

"Why does it matter? Don't you like kissing me?" she teased, her voice husky. He didn't bother to answer; she was sitting in his lap and could definitely tell just how much he did like it. His heart was pounding so quickly under her hand that it would have been impossible for her not to feel it, and her lips were pressed close enough to his neck that she could hear his breath hitch every time she moved. _Of course **I** like it_ , he wanted to say, _why do **you**?_ But that sounded too pathetic to voice aloud, so he pulled back just far enough that he could look up into her face and waited for her to speak.

"Jonathan," she huffed as she dropped her head into his shoulder, clearly frustrated, "we have to hunt down a monster in the morning. So for the next ten hours, all I want is for you to please, _please_ shut up, kiss me, touch me, and make me forget that this shitty town even exists. Can you do that?"

There was something dark and predatory and _hungry_ about the way he looked at her as she spoke that made her skin feel like it was on fire.

"That works for me."

And suddenly she was on her back, being pressed into the messy sheets by Jonathan's weight as he crawled over her, his mouth hot against her skin. And _this_ was she needed- not to be treated like she was some small, breakable thing that might easily shatter. When he wound her hair around his fingers and tugged, exposing her neck to his teeth she couldn't stop the moan that slipped from between her lips.

" _Shhh_ ," he said, grinning mockingly, biting down softly at the spot where her neck met her collarbone, and she fought the urge to smack him until she felt his hand running up her thigh, fingers slipping under the plain cotton of her underwear, stroking the sensitive skin he found there, and suddenly ten hours didn't seem like nearly enough time.

 

\---

 

The sun was already shining weakly through the window when they woke up. Careful not to wake up the rest of the house they hid Nancy's duffel bag and funeral clothes under the bed and dressed quickly, arming themselves with the pistol and bat. She watched as Jonathan loaded the bullets into the gun, and he smiled when he looked up and caught her eye.

"Let's go hunt some monsters."


End file.
